Quebec’s artists are a global phenomenon, from Celine Dion to the Montreal Jazz Festival, thanks to a unique government policy that values the arts as a major industry. Colin Hicks, the province’s London director of cultural services, tells Simon Tait how it works

You’ve never heard of it but, in its way, it’s one of the most powerful arms of the government. Conseil des Arts et des Lettres sounds like a quaint provincial French club for aesthetes, but without it we probably would never have had heard of Robert Le Page, Cirque du Soleil, La La La Human Steps or even Celine Dion.

For this is the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres de Quebec, the Canadian French-speaking enclave’s arts council, and all these international names started with the CALQ. The government is the provincial one sitting in Quebec City for which the CALQ acts as Arts Council, British Council and arts investment bank. It nurtures artists, supports them, promotes them, and then takes a cut of their financial success as well as standing back with the rest of the world and applauding.

“It’s a kind of a mixture of the francophone way of doing things, which is to put your cultural money where your cultural mouth is, and the North American ‘can do’ society” says Colin Hicks, Quebec’s British director of cultural services in London for the last 17 years.

With a population of 7.3m, the CALQ has an annual subsidy – or investment as they prefer to call it - of C$636m, or C$80 per head of population. That translates as £354m and compares with our own ACE’s £417 million for a population of just over 50m, or a little over £8 a head. The money comes from Quebec’s culture ministry, the only culture ministry in the world which combines the “condition of women” in its remit.

Next week a modern flat in Bethnal Green will be inaugurated as their first subsidised artist’s studio in the UK. The first tenant is Christian Quesnel, a comic strip artist in his 40s, who leaves behind in Montreal a wife and two daughters and who will have six months living and working here on a government subsidy. He will be creating new work, maybe even exhibiting if it’s appropriate, but his most important task will be more discreet: to network.

While culture in this country has only quite recently been recognised for its export value, Quebec’s artists have been seen as its chief export since the ministry was first set up in 1961, explains Hicks, a Brit who, before taking up his present post, worked for our Arts Council as the deputy director of South East Arts. As well as from the CALQ, Quebec’s touring artists also have the support of the Canada Council, the national equivalent of the Arts Council. “Because 22% of the Canadian population live in Quebec, 22% of the Canada Council touring budget goes to Quebec artists” Hicks says, “and since Quebec is a powerhouse for Canadian culture we spend a bigger share on touring – next comes Ontario and after that British Columbia.

“Quebec produces a lot of stuff, success breeds success, and Montreal, Quebec’s largest city, has become a magnet for other Canadian artists.”

But CALQ has also developed as a unique two-headed arts council: one is a conventional subvention agency, the other is an investment bank which puts money into cultural enterprises and expects to take a profit which can be reinvested. And with enterprises such Celine Dion selling 25m CDs a year, the tax return alone on any investment is impressive. Two years ago Cirque du Soleil, still based in Montreal despite its global presence, paid back its start-up subsidy is full; about 20% of Robert Lepage’s funding is still from the state, but in 2001 he gave something much more back in the form of La Caserne, his Montreal “Center of Creation” which is a rehearsal hall, workshop, flexible space, and collaborative creative centre that is also home to half a dozen companies which has been an inspiration in this country in the notion of “centres of excellence”.

The status has been politically hard fought for, and the Quebecois approach to culture is now at odds with the Conservative Canadian government’s, which is cutting its arts subsidy.

But a community that boasts 52 dance companies in Montreal alone knows that art, and particularly performance, has become a national expression. “Since 1994 cultural policy has been cross party, and has benefited hugely from not ever being a political football – which makes my job a lot easier because I don’t have to play politics and we can concentrate on the art” Hicks says. “It’s been fought for and the general populace of Quebec, not just the professional sector, do feel their culture is very much part of who they are.”